Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Malloy To Voters: The Joke’s On You

There is no danger
anyone will read into the remarks made by Governor Dannel Malloy to the Middlesex Chamber of Commerce (MCC) a
gubernatorial resolve to reduce Connecticut’s burdensome taxes or regulations.

Just the opposite;
even reporters “got” the joke made by Mr. Malloy towards the end of his MCC
speech when the Governor was asked, following his remark that he had
“righted the ship” of state, whether he feared he was raising expectations that
could not be met, in view of Connecticut’s still doubtful economic rebound.

According to the
official arbiter of U.S. recessions, the National Bureau of Economic Research,
the “Great Recession,” which started with the subprime mortgage crisis in
December 2007 and ended in June 2009, lasted a little over 18 months.Although
the national recession had ended fifteen years ago, Connecticut has yet to fully recover the jobs it lost during the protracted recession. In addition,
the state is now facing yet another deficit, which followed claims made by Mr. Malloy
during his gubernatorial campaign that the state’s books were in balance. In
fact, they were out of kilter by about $100 million, a datum
that, had it been certified during the election, might have cost Mr. Malloy
enough votes to push him into the loser category.

“’Not now that the
election is over, no,’ Malloy said, his face deadpan. Then he laughed.”

It was a bit of an inside
joke. Inside jokes among chief executives and the media usually fly over the
heads of duped voters.

Here is the joke:
The election is now over, and Mr. Malloy won it by a slender majority over a
Republican competitor who had argued that Mr. Malloy’s bookkeeping was, to put
it gently, as ingenious as it was disingenuous.
The books were not in balance, Republicans had cautioned. While it is
now obvious in the post-election period that Republicans had won the disputed
point, they had lost the election. Harry Truman once said he would rather be
right than President. Mr. Malloy was now turning the Truman apothegm on its
head and hinting, with a knowing wink at the media, that if you are president –
or, in his case, governor – the winning of an election makes moot election
disputes. If you win the game, fouls committed during the campaign don’t
matter.

Get it?

One may be sure
reporters attending Mr. Malloy’s lecture on political amorality got it. “It was
a joke,” one reporter noted in his story, “colored by the reality that one
political challenge has been met, even if plenty remain. With a 28,000-vote
win, Malloy has four more years.”

And what does Mr.
Malloy and the Democratic dominated General Assembly plan to do during those
four years? Cut spending?” Nope. Shout “cut spending” in the General Assembly
and you will be greeted with an embarrassed silence. Does Mr. Malloy intend to
raise taxes? No, said he during his campaign. However, some reporters and
commentators will remember Mr. Malloy insisted during the same campaign that
the state’s books were in balance. For clever politicians addicted to tax
increases, there surely is more than one way to skin a taxpayer. Removing tax
line items from the budget and transferring them to the state’s credit card,
its borrowing slush fund, is one way to reduce a deficit without raising taxes.
During his first campaign for governor, Mr. Malloy heartily condemned such
practices as a disreputable accounting sleight of hand often indulged in by
sinister Republican gubernatorial reprobates.

After the election, if you are Mr. Malloy, you just
begin the future with a wiped slate. You have four more years to spin the
roulette wheel. You may safely put behind you all the red ink -- such as
possible future deficits brought about by shrinking revenue streams; thanks to
fracking, gas prices are down, and with them state revenues from the highest
gas taxes in the nation. Connecticut’s economy is still
running on half its cylinders, and the sluggish economy reduces cash reserves.
His next biennial budget will be in the red by about $2.8 billion. And then,
though nearly everyone in state government is loathe to mention debt
obligations, at $65 billion near tops per capita in the nation, Mr. Malloy did
promise to hack away at that debt. Where will the money to pay state
bills come from? The middle class in Connecticut, which solicitous progressives
claim to represent, has no juice left in it.

Never you mind: Mr.
Malloy is on to the next BIG THING; he has turned the page on adversity.

“I’m working on a big vision,” Mr. Malloy told the Middlesex Chamber of Commerce “I’m working on what it will
take for us to be competitive with other states and I’m going to lead that
discussion. Then people can tell me what needs to come off the list.”

Another day, another
spending list, another bully pulpit speech, another BIG VISION. Even Teddy
Roosevelt took a breath from time to time. Not Mr. Malloy. He rushes past the
sign overhanging the gates of Hell: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here” –
straight into the fiery furnace, his green tie flapping gaily in the flames.